David Cosper

Biography

As Associate Professor of Music History & Culture, David Cosper teaches courses in music criticism, ethnomusicology, popular music, jazz studies, music of the United States, and general music history. Dr. Cosper holds degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Virginia, where he completed the Ph.D. in Critical and Comparative Studies in Music. His interdisciplinary research explores theoretical approaches to musical performance informed by narratology, literary theory, and media studies, with particular emphasis on jazz and contemporary music. His scholarly work appears in Jazz Perspectives, Narrative Culture, Jazz Research Journal, Frontiers of Narrative Studies, and Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, among other publications. Dr. Cosper has presented research at international conferences, including the American Musicological Society, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, the Australian Musicological Society, and the New Zealand Musicological Society, of which he was president between 2015 and 2017. He is also an active bassist and composer and remains committed to the integration of scholarship, performance, and the pedagogy of creativity. Prior to joining the Department of Music in 2017, Dr. Cosper taught as an instructor in the Department of Music and the Department of English at the University of Virginia and as Lecturer in Contemporary Music and Culture at Te Kōkī / New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington.